A Voice of Conservatism Living in Carolina Blue

Media Bias – II

Last month I posted about Media Bias as it pertained to the coverage in the Wisconsin Labor dispute between the public sector unions and Governor Walker. In it, I decried that while Gallup DID, in fact, report on their poll that showed strong support for the limitation of State workers. However, Gallup hid that report so deep and under such misguided headlines that it would never be found.

The top 3 most popular choices in dealing with state budgets? Reducing the power and influence of the state worker. Specifically, reducing the ability of the state unions to collectively bargain.

Recent headlines made me stop as I saw yet another case of media bias.

The story I was reading involved the homeless woman in Bridgeport, CT who enrolled her kid in a school outside her own district. As I did a little bit of research on it for a post on school choice, I read through a number of reports. I found the back story being reported very interesting.

The essence of the story was the same; single mother is homeless and needs to send her kid to school. The district she lives in is horrible so she uses the address of a friend to enroll little Johnny. Only she gets caught, arrested and fined for the offense.

The horror!

On first blush, it is pretty awful. I mean, come on! All she wants to do is give her kid the best education she can. And she knows that she has a better chance of doing that THERE than HERE. Plus she’s a single mother. And homeless.

Personally, I’m all for the choice thing. If it were up to me, she’d have a voucher [as would every other red-blooded child in America] to use to go to any school she wanted, private OR public.

But, whatever, that’s not the point. The point is the reporting.

I read the report from here and here. In it you find the basics of the story plus a little bit of back story concerning the prosecutor and the mayor. By and by, it’s fine reporting.

Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia, meanwhile, defended the arrest, saying McDowell used a friend’s public housing address to enroll her son at Brookside Elementary School. Moccia also noted McDowell’s criminal history, including a November arrest for possession of marijuana and narcotics and an 18-month prison term in 2001 for robbery and weapons offenses.

“This is not a poor, picked-upon homeless person,” Moccia said on Monday. “This is an ex con, and somehow the city of Norwalk is made into the ogre in this. She has a checkered past at best.”

Bias?

I think so.

I’ll leave it to you decide who is and who isn’t in this case. What’cha think?